Revelation 1:5, 6 And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth… Unto him that loved us, etc. It has been remarked that the writer of the Revelation had hardly set himself down to his work ere he felt that he must lift up his heart in joyful doxology. The very mention of the name of the Lord Jesus, by whose Spirit he was writing, starts him off in this heart song of praise. He could not go on until he had given utterance to the irrepressible love for his Lord with which his soul was filled to overflowing. And this is his way. How many are the outbreaks of praise which we find in this book! It is a land full of fountains and springs and wells, out of which flow this river which makes glad the city of God. And St. John does not stand alone in this respect. All those holy men of old who were so privileged as to come into blessed contact with the Lord caught the contagion of praise. St. Paul is continually breaking forth into doxologies. "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding," etc. (Ephesians 3:20; and cf. Romans 16:25; Romans 11:36; 1 Timothy 1:17; Hebrews 13:20). And so St. Peter (1 Epistles 4:11; 5:11). And so St. Jude (ver. 24), etc. Thus is it with all the sacred writers. Truly might it have been said concerning them all, "They will be still praising thee." And blessed are they whose hearts are thus attuned, ever ready to give forth praise, sweet, clear, strong, full, whenever the spirit of Christ's love touches them. Like as in those great concerts where royalty is expected to be present, the whole vast orchestra stand ready the moment the royal personages enter to begin the National Anthem: so should "praise wait" for God in all our hearts. And it has been pointed out how these doxologies grow in volume and emphasis as this book goes on. Here in these verses we read, "To him be glory and dominion forever and ever." But in the fourth chapter (ver. 9) we read of there being rendered "glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on the throne;" and in ver. 11 we read the same, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power." The doxology has grown from two to three notes of praise in each of these verses. But in Revelation 5:13 we read, "And every creature ... heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him," etc. Here we have four of these notes. But by the time we get to Revelation 7:12 we have reached the number of perfection, and may not ask for more: "Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God forever and ever. Amen." If you begin praising God, you are bound to go on; like a river which at its outset is but a tiny rill, yet increases more and more as it flows along. But what waked up this heart song of praise which we have here? There had been various and most blessed thoughts of Christ in St. John's mind. In this very verse he tells how Christ is "the Faithful Witness," i.e. the Witness which told to men the perfect truth as to God and the life eternal. And here he is "the First Begotten from the dead," i.e. the pledge and guarantee of the resurrection of all the dead, as were the firstfruits of the harvest of the rest of the harvest (1 Corinthians 15:21). Oh, blessed revelation this! Then was he not "Prince of the kings of the earth," i.e. supreme Lord and Master of them and of all that they do? In his hands they all are, and it is by his permission alone they rule. It was blessed and heart inspiring to know all this, but the fount of St. John's praise was opened when his thought turned to those truths of which our text tells. When he thought of the Lord Jesus and of his great love, then he could contain himself no longer, but burst forth in this beautiful song of praise, "Unto him that loved us ... Amen." Let us look a little at these words of praise, and try and discover the springs from which such praise flows forth. And they seem to me to be mainly three. I. THE VIVID REALIZATION OF CHRIST HIMSELF. "Unto him, unto him," the apostle repeats, and it is evident that before the eyes of his soul the Lord Jesus Christ was evidently set forth. He seems to see him - his looks, his movements, his Person; to hear his words, and to catch the accents of his voice. Christ is to him as real as any of his fellow men. And this is most important to the enkindling of love within our own souls. For the mere contemplation of love in the abstract will not stir them. You may tell me ever so much about maternal love, for example, but whilst it is contemplated in a merely general way, as that which belongs to many, it will not move me much. But tell me something about my own mother, and of her love to me, and that will be quite another matter. The most hardened and depraved have often been broken down and subdued to better things by memories of their mothers' love. But it was because it was their mothers' that it moved them so. And it is the same in regard to the love told of in our text. Had it been apart from a living person, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, only a vague quality moving in the midst of men, however much it may have benefited them, it would never have aroused their gratitude or stirred their hearts. For that you must have such love centred in a person whom you can know and understand; and better still if you have already known him and he you. And if we have not known Christ, if his Name be to us a mere word, if he be to us shadowy and unreal, scarce a person at all, we cannot enter into or sympathize with such enthusiasm as his disciple here expresses. Is it not a constant and just reproach against our poor laws that their administration of relief elicits no gratitude on the part of those relieved? It benefits neither giver nor receiver. But let a benevolent person go himself or herself to those who need relief, and come into living personal contact with them, so that they may feel the good will for them that beats in their benefactor's heart, and how different the result will be then! Conduct like that will wake up a response in almost the most insensate hearts, and the relief itself will be more prized for the sake of him or her who gives it than for itself. And so, did even Christ's love come to us apart from him; did we not know and see him in it all; were we forgiven and saved we knew not how, or why, or by whom; - we should feel no more gratitude on account of it than we do to the air we breathe or the water we drink. But when we see that it is Christ who loves us, Christ who washed us from our sins in his own blood, Christ who made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, then all is changed, and gratitude wakes up and praise bursts forth, and with Christ's apostle we also say, "Unto him that," etc. Oh, my brethren, try to get this personal realization of Christ. It was the sense of its importance that first led to the use of pictures, crosses, crucifixes, and the like aids to such realization of Christ. They have been so much abused that many fear to use them at all; and they are by no means the only or the best way to attain to the result which is so much to be desired. But by the devout reading of the Gospels and the Word of God generally, by much meditation thereupon, by frequent and fervent prayer, the image of Christ, now so faint and dim in many hearts, will come out clear and vivid, distinct and permanent, to your great joy and abiding good. You know how the picture on the photographer's plate is at first almost undiscernible, but he plunges it into the bath he has prepared for it, and then every line and form and feature become visible, and the picture is complete. Plunge your souls, my brethren, into the blessed bath of God's Word and thought and prayer, and then to you, as to St. John, Christ will become visible, and he will be realized by you as he has never been before. And the result will be that prayer will become to you delightful, as is converse with a dear friend; and faith will keep her foothold firmly as ofttimes now she fails to do; and love will come and stay and grow towards Christ in our hearts; and heaven will have begun below. Such realization of Christ was one mainspring of this outburst of praise. II. ANOTHER WAS ST. JOHN'S DEEP SENSE OF THE GREATNESS OF CHRIST'S LOVE. He tells of four great facts. 1. Its compassion. "Unto him that loved us." Before the apostle's mind there seems to rise up the vision of what he and his fellow believers had once been - so foul and unclean, not with mere outward defilement, but with that inward foulness of the heart which to the Holy and Undefiled One could not but have been repulsive in the highest degree. And yet the Lord loved him. We can understand his pitying men so miserable, even whilst he condemned their sin; and we can understand how, on their repentance, he might pardon them. But to take them into his favour, to make them the objects of his love, that is wonderful indeed. And thus has he dealt with all of us. And his love is not a fitful passing thing - a love that has been, but is not. The real reading of our text is in the present, the abiding sense: "Unto him that loveth us." Christ always loves his people. "Having loved his own, he loved them to the end." And it is so wonderful and unique a thing, that to mention it is description enough whereby it may be known that Christ is meant. For John does not mention our Lord's name, but just as the expression, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," was sufficient to identify John, so "him that loved us" is sufficient to identify our Lord. For none such as he was ever loved such as we were, or loved us in such a way. But for such love, when realized and felt as St. John felt it, how could he do other than render praise? 2. The costly cleansing. "Hath washed us from our sins in his own blood." There is many a distressful condition into which a man may fall, and grateful will he be to him who saves him therefrom, as from sickness, poverty, affliction, disgrace, death; but there is no condition so truly terrible as that of sin. That is the root evil, the fons et origo of all else. Let that not be, and the rest change their nature directly, and can easily be borne; but where sin is there they all become charged with a sting and venom which but for this they could not have. Therefore to be delivered from all other evil and not from sin would be no deliverance worthy of the name; but to be delivered from sin is deliverance, salvation indeed, bringing along with it deliverance from all other evil whatsoever. And St. John felt this. He had heard how the Lord had said to the poor palsied one who had been let down through the roof into his presence, that he might be healed, "Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee? That word told the man himself, and all mankind beside, that our sins are our greatest enemies. There is no evil that can befall a man comparable with that. But it is from this sum of all evils that Christ cleanses. And at what cost? Nothing less than "his own blood." All manner of questions may be asked as to the relationship between the blood of Christ and our cleansing, and all manner of answers have been given, some more, some less satisfactory. But that is not now our concern. Only the fact that "without shedding of blood there is no remission," and that it is "the blood of Jesus Christ which cleanseth from all sin." And he was content to suffer death that so we might be saved. St. John had stood beneath the cross of his Lord, had been with him in Gethsemane, and he knew what this "washing us from our sins in his own blood" meant, what infinite love alone could have submitted to such a death. What wonder that his heart should overflow with praise? 3. And then there was also the coronation. He "hath made us kings." Surely none could look less like kings than the shivering crowd of persecuted people to whom St. John addressed his book. In what sense, then, could it be that Christ had made them kings.? Only, for the present, in the lordship he had given them over themselves, and over all the power of their adversaries. They could compel, by the force of the regal will with which their Lord had invested them, their trembling flesh, their wavering purpose, their crowd of earthly affections, to a steadfastness and courage which of themselves they had never known. And when thus equipped, strengthened with all might, crowned as kings, by God's Spirit in the inner man, they could meet and defy, endure and vanquish, all their persecutors' power. It gave way to them, not they to it. Thus had the Lord made them kings. 4. And finally, the consecration. He "hath made us priests." True, no mitre decked their brow, no sacerdotal vestments hung from their shoulders; they belonged to no separate order, they claimed no ecclesiastical rank. But yet Christ had consecrated them. They were by him dedicated to God, they were holy unto the Lord, and in their prayers and supplications and manifold charities they offered, as priests should, "gifts and sacrifices for men." To hearts inflamed with the love of Christ this power of blessing and helping men, appertaining as it ever does to the priestly office, could not but be a further cause of gratitude and praise. Yes; the compassionate love, the costly cleansing, the coronation as kings, and the consecration as priests unto God, - these did, as they well might, call forth this fervent praise. But there was yet a third cause, and it was - III. His CERTAINTY THAT THESE BLESSINGS WERE REALLY HIS. If he had doubted, he would have been dumb. Zacharias became so because he doubted, but his glorious song of praise burst forth when doubt and dumbness were together gone. And so will it be with ourselves. If we only hope and trust that we are Christ's, and Christ is ours; if we have not "the full assurance of the hope" which God's Word is ever urging us to strive after; but are often saying and singing - "'Tis a point I long to know, Oft it causes anxious thought: Do I love the Lord or no? Am I his or am I not?" until a better and brighter condition of mind be ours, - we cannot praise Christ as St. John did. He was certain, that Christ loved him, that Christ had washed him from his sins, that Christ had made him king and priest unto God; he had no doubt of it whatsoever. Oh for like precious faith! CONCLUSION. If we do truly desire such faith, it is proof that some measure of it is in us already. If, then, we do know what Christ has done for us, let us join in this "unto him," and render to him: Glory - the glory which our renewed trust, our faithful witnessing for him, may bring to him. Dominion - over our own hearts chief of all, keeping back no faculty or power, no feeling or desire, no purpose or will, but surrendering all to him. And this "forever and ever." Not a surrender made today and recalled tomorrow, but one to which, by his grace, we will forever stand. Oh that we may! Give, then, your heartfelt "Amen" to all this. As we read this verse, let us join in the "Amen," let it be our praise also. Amen and Amen. - S.C. Parallel Verses KJV: And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, |
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